Today I am headed to Vegas for another trip to the AVN Awards. I have covered the “Oscars of Porn” for the last decade and it’s always a solid mix of weirdness, fun and horror that people keep paying me to capture.

Every year I tend to have a bunch of clients but this year I oddly just have one. It’s one I am pretty excited about it and it’s paying for my trip, but it’s been weird to see local media just disappear. The Village Voice was sold and I don’t know anyone there anymore. The LA Weekly was sold and they fired their entire staff. Gothamist/DCist/LAist/Chicagoist/Etcist are all gone and I am sure there are a lot more to follow.

Last year one of my clients was Vice. I had shot the AVNs for them in 2016 and they assigned it to me the day I landed in Vegas last year. I was actually really happy with the stuff I shot for them, and they had every intention to publish it, but the AVNs took place the day of the Women’s March last year and with all the political stuff going on they never ran it. Amazingly I still got paid (I was not so lucky with a Gathering of the Juggalos client that never published my work because it happened in between the Republican and Democratic National Conventions), but the photos never saw the light of day… until now!

This huge gallery of 35mm photos from the 2017 AVN Awards (and the Adult Entertainment Expo and surrounding madness) was the large edit I sent to Vice. This would have been edited down to a dozen or so images but I figured I would give you guys everything.

It’s cool to look back and see how some of it seems like it just happened and other stuff seems like it was ages ago. The very first photo is of Blair Williams and her friend Belen. When my Instaxxx book came out I ended up staying at Blair’s house and actually photographed Belen at her place. It feels like I’ve known Blair for ages even though we have only hung out a few times.

I shot Keisha Grey on the ledge of her hotel room which was totally fucking insane and ended up as a full spread in Instaxxx. My friend Lucy Everleigh introduced me to a bunch of cam girls including Ana Mercury who is now a pretty good friend and I finally got to shoot Holly Beth who I ended up staying with once and she actually crashed with me in NYC. There’s even a photo of my girlfriend in here who I didn’t even know at the time and didn’t even notice until just now when I looked at the photos again!

Oh, and there’s also some stuff I shot when we filmed a segment for the actual AVN Awards broadcast on Showtime where Jillian Janson and I were interviewed. I uploaded it here if you want to watch it. 

It’s almost 100 photos and there are at least 15 photos in this gallery I don’t hate. Take a look for it and hopefully I will be back pretty soon with some more AVN madness from the 2018 AVN Awards… but first I am gonna go hang out with my lady in a Vegas hotel room until this insanity starts.

Click here to see all the 35mm photos I shot for Vice for the 2017 AVN Awards weekend last January.

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